


thick as thieves

by casualbird



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Character Study, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Nonbinary Character, immediately post-auction arc, implied canon-typical Zoldyck Family Nastiness, loose five times, what's with this sassy... lost child?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:27:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26665156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casualbird/pseuds/casualbird
Summary: It shouldn’t bother him. Kalluto is nine and a half, thank you, and a needle-sharp assassin. He has been alone in rooms of people many times, and generally folk are trapped in there with him rather than the other way around.Still. These people are strange. There’s nearly a dozen of them, all sitting slumped in chairs too proper for them, or just cross-legged on the floor. Mother would never allow it, if the state of their hair and clothes didn’t kill her first.Five times Kalluto doesn't understand the Phantom Troupe and one time that he does.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 105





	thick as thieves

They relax when Illumi goes--most people do. In turn, Kalluto’s bones and ligaments go taut, the crowded room ringing with _alone._

It shouldn’t bother him. Kalluto is nine and a half, thank you, and a needle-sharp assassin. He has been alone in rooms of people many times, and generally folk are trapped in there with him rather than the other way around.

Still. These people are strange. There’s nearly a dozen of them, all sitting slumped in chairs too proper for them, or just cross-legged on the floor. Mother would never allow it, if the state of their hair and clothes didn’t kill her first.

Kalluto stands mutely, resolved to wait until they need something of him. _Kill these people,_ or perhaps even _steal this thing._ Kalluto has never stolen before--the prospect is almost exciting.

For a moment, though, all they do is stare. Some of them smile. One--the glasses lady--waves.

He does not wave back.

A man, dressed like a sarcophagus, turns to a man dressed like a mummy: _“I didn’t know they_ had _a kid that young.”_

A pink-haired lady smacks him. As she turns, he can see she’s neglected to redye her roots. He can hear his mother, tsk-tsking. Unruliness, unkemptness.

She turns to Kalluto, sighing, and his fingers knit tighter to themselves.

“Hey kid,” she says, disaffected. “What d’we call you?”

Kalluto suppresses the urge to cock his head. Illumi had just been there, just introduced him. _My youngest brother, Kalluto Zoldyck. A fine, efficient young assassin._ The praise looped in his mind, though there was, as ever, no time to preen.

“My name is Kalluto,” he says, as crisp and clean as a white linen napkin. She smirks.

“Machi,” she says. “But I asked what you want to be called. D’you have a nickname, or something?”

“A _nom de guerre?”_ pipes up the mummy. Kalluto has no idea what that means, but keeps it to himself.

He thinks, for a second, of the way his family calls him Kallu. Can hear it, sweet and scolding and shrieking at once.

It doesn’t belong to these ramshackle people, so he shakes his head. Besides. Using his full name sounds more grown-up.

The woman--Machi--nods. “‘Kay.” There is a small chorus of acknowledgement--the odd _alright_ or _hmm_ or mumbled introduction. Kalluto has been extensively trained to pick out individual sounds, but for reasons he’s not sure of, he can’t conjure the ability just now. So he just bows a little, tells them that he’s pleased to make their acquaintance.

“Yeah,” Machi says, and Kalluto doesn’t think it’s quite his imagination that she brightens up a little. “Welcome.”

The others--for the most part--echo. It is impressed distinctly onto Kalluto that he actually ought to feel as much.

Breaths measured, standing straight and sentinel-still, he does not.

* * *

The strangest thing about the Troupe is that they take no jobs. In the first several days, all Kalluto sees them doing is wilting, terse and dour around their suite, brows and jaws tight. One’s fingers scuttle furious across computer keys for hours, and occasionally one or another of them will spend a few minutes growling down the phone.

They try to keep the mood up with endless arm-wrestling matches, rounds on rounds of a racing game that makes Kalluto think of Killua.

Well. It makes him think of Milluki, too, but he prefers to think of Killua.

He doesn’t join the games when he’s invited to. 

Some of them speak to him anyway. The glasses lady, the wide one, the mummy. Only as long as it takes for them to realize that their new compatriot has little use for small talk. Others just smile, or gesture, and some just stare. A man subsumed in black clothes watches from his perch atop a bookshelf.

Kalluto sits neatly in the corner, practicing with his paper dolls and watching them all back, foundering for some kind of reason for this idleness.

In the evenings, it’s usually the man with the frightful hairstyle who leads Kalluto to the suite’s one bedroom, tells him to get some rest. He always sounds like he needs it more than Kalluto does, but he doesn’t say as much.

The mornings are similarly uneventful. Kalluto wakes at half five every morning, precise and practiced, and is always a little taken aback to find that the Troupe sleeps in.

It’s not _surprising,_ not really. Lying in bed, he overhears them arguing, drinking deep into the night. When they do wake, they’re always muttering, brutally hungover. He’s seen his marks behave this way, has heard his mother peer over his shoulder at the dossier, spit _degenerates._

The strange thing--is it the second-strangest thing about them? Kalluto finds it bizarre--is the way they sleep.

Eleven full-grown weapons, as feared and famed as plague, all sleeping heaped on the floor. Bodies tangled, hands clasped, strands of hair sticking in slack mouths. Some embrace, some just lay limp wherever they’d happened to fall. The lion’s share of them snore, too, as boorish as their drinking, their swearing, their presentations of themselves.

Kalluto thinks, briefly, of the conniption his mother would have if she saw him lay that way with Killua and Alluka. It isn’t useful to think of them though, so he makes an effort to stop.

Maybe it is the strangest thing about them. That they do not avail themselves of the hotel’s amenities, even though they have the money. That they tolerate, seek out the continued touch of others. That they do this--this thing, this drunken blotching-out, that makes them so much easier to kill.

He doesn’t kill them, of course. Just wonders, over and over, sat in the center of his enormous bed.

Still, he stops short of asking Illumi about it.

* * *

On the fifth day with no job, Kalluto meets the little one. The little dust mote, ragamuffiny and shy, always playing with knick-knacks in the corner.

Kalluto’s smile when he introduces himself is wan as ever, but very nearly genuine. _How old are you,_ he wonders, _are you a man or a woman?_

He had, however, been raised to understand that there was no strictly polite way to ask these questions, so instead he only stares.

The dust mote doesn’t seem bothered. Silently, and with a movement under their curtain of hair that might have been an answering smile, Dust Mote lays a little trinket on the floor before him. It’s a little clay horse, and it looks impossibly old. Like the things in the china cabinets at home, relics of the everlong arc of Zoldyck history.

Kalluto was forbidden in no uncertain terms to touch those, so he leaves the little thing alone. Just watches it, eyes wide, mapping all its little lumps and cracks.

Then--in the space of a blink--the figurine was gone. Not crumbled, not dissolved, just… nipped out of existence. Kalluto jumps--a Nen trick?

The one eye that he could see of Dust Mote’s crinkles up, and Kalluto can’t resist that tinny little laugh.

With one hand demure over his mouth, he laughs back.

_How do you do that,_ he does not ask. That would be rudest of all.

Just as the silence extends beyond the comfortable, the dust mote speaks up.

“Kortopi.”

Kalluto nods, extends a hand, and they shake. Kortopi’s hand is smaller even than Kalluto’s, with a weak grip. Kalluto wonders.

“They/them,” says Kortopi, and Kalluto wonders even more.

This, he can’t quite stop from asking about.

“Sorry?”

There is a loud, long-suffering sigh--Machi, bending backwards over her plush armchair.

“They never teach rich kids _anything,”_ she groans. “Listen up, don’t make me say it again.” She sounds… resigned, tired, but there is a distinctly dulled edge to it, a yawing lack of enmity. Kalluto thinks that he likes Machi.

“Your parents probably told you that there’re rules to everything.”

Quizzically, Kalluto nods.

“There aren’t,” says Machi, curtly. “And there’s not just boys and girls, men and women. Some people just don’t like to be that way, and we give them their respect.”

Kalluto asks himself why this has been left out of his mother’s long, exacting lessons on propriety, if it is indeed a matter of etiquette. But, well. Thinking of Alluka, he more or less understands.

It’s not her fault she’d rather not be a boy, he’d always thought. And sometimes--he’d wonder, if being a boy was really all it was cracked up to be.

Maybe it was like that.

He looks sheepishly over to Kortopi, but they (they? is that right?) don’t seem bothered. Their wide eye just watches Machi, with a placidity that suggests this is the nth time she’s made this speech.

“I’ll show you,” she says. “This is Kortopi. They’re my friend. I’m their friend. And if you don’t mind your manners around them, I’m going to--to ground you, or something. Capisce?”

Kalluto nods again, this time quite briskly.

“My apologies,” he says, to both of them in turn. “Thank you for teaching me.” 

Machi seems satisfied--Kalluto catches a hint of a smile as she bends back over her chair. “Good kid.”

“So…” begins Kalluto, thoughtfully. “This is Kortopi. They can make things disappear.”

Kortopi’s hair shifts again, as if their cheeks are coming up, as if they’re smiling wide. “Yes.”

“I braid my mother and brother’s hair. I could… help Kortopi keep their hair out of their face.”

Their face shifts further--a grin. “You can try,” they say, half-laughing.

And so he does. Parts their stringy hair with careful fingers, winds it into a tidy crown about their head. He’s had a lot of practice, he doesn’t need to pay the motion much mind.

As such, his mind wanders--to Kortopi’s _they,_ Machi’s lesson. _You think there are rules, but there aren’t._

Kalluto is still very certain that the world is a place for rules, for rigid definition. It’s simply--that his mother’s definition… may not have been the right one. That it must be true that there are all kinds of people.

He shies away from wondering what else she might be wrong about. Just turns these new laws over again in his mind, wonders why the concept of _neither man nor woman_ makes so much _sense,_ feels so depthlessly freeing.

* * *

He doesn’t mind being sent to bed, really. Not even for the sake of Grandfather’s old saying-- _early to bed, early to rise._ Just because, when they usher him away, he doesn’t have to worry so much about getting caught eavesdropping.

Of course, it’s not hard to fool them. Kalluto is a prodigy of the art, having learned from Illumi and Mother. Assassins, yes, but also highly accomplished busybodies.

The other perk is that they speak more freely when they think he’s gone to sleep. As if some warm milk and a pat on the head would neutralize him.

When he sits up late with a glass to his door, Kalluto hears a lot about someone called Boss.

Sometimes, some of them are angry with him. They ask him hissing, hair-tearing questions; _where are you, how’d this happen, what can I do?_

On the whole, though, they just seem gloomy.

Kalluto gathers that Boss has gone away, that they can’t find him.

They sigh and sigh and sigh.

Kalluto gathers that they aren’t working in the absence of their boss. But still. He sends home a communique to Illumi every night, and is briefed each morning. It is frightening, true, but not so hard to be apart from the one who commands you. Any proper organization would have measures in place for such separations.

He suggests it, one morning, tugging at the hem of Shizuku’s turtleneck. His tone is flat, to hide the fact that he thinks the whole thing rather stupid.

She blinks at him through window-thick glasses, explains softly that they can’t. They can’t call him, can’t find him.

Kalluto realizes that he’s been thinking of Boss like Illumi, when really he seems to be gone more the way that Killua is.

Killua, who ran away all on his own.

Like Alluka--confusing as she was, Kalluto felt it like a stolen limb when she never came up from the basement.

He nods to Shizuku, apologizing brusquely, and spends the rest of the day silently cutting paper dolls.

Killua, Alluka, himself, all smiling, all holding fast at the hands.

* * *

It’s scarcely a week he’s been there when the hotel’s bathroom runs out of conditioner--and even in that time, the stuff was barely passable. Not like the fine serums in his own bathroom, the finer ones in Mother’s.

He tells the Troupe he’ll be back soon--the situation must be rectified immediately. Once outside, he dashes off a brief, obligatory text to Illumi, tells him where he’ll be.

It’s a short jaunt uptown, aided by his sleek GPS unit, before Kalluto finds a high-street hair salon. Perfect for his purposes, and out of the rain; he ducks in with all swiftness.

A shop girl coos over him, asks if he’d like help and whether his mother’s birthday was coming up. He gives her a polite, decisive no, and half-laughs to think how difficult it would be for Mother or Illumi to resist making a scene. The right to patronize Kalluto, they believe, belongs exclusively to them.

The shop’s selection puts it out of his mind soon enough, and soon Kalluto’s selected a hair oil that’ll serve him just fine. And one for Illumi, because Kalluto does so love it when he’s given a souvenir.

And one for Machi, because her hair is color-damaged beyond all reason. And one for Phinks, the sarcophagus man who has nothing but split ends, because any organization with which he associates probably ought to smarten up.

Also, because it’s his allowance and he can spend it as he likes.

Not because he enjoys their company. Particularly not because he feels indebted.

As an afterthought, he plucks up a set of hair sticks, so that Nobunaga will be less tempted to wear his hair in that ghastly TV-aerial style.

Quick as anything, he’s on his way, darting back down the bustling Yorkshin sidewalks. Except--the clock on the GPS reveals he’d been in the shop for the better part of an hour. Hm.

He hurries back--for the sake of efficiency, not because he’s eager to smoke Bonolenov at Gungi once again.

It doesn’t take long, however, before he’s arrested by the sound of someone hollering his name.

This is never a good sign, but to avoid the summons would be much worse. A Zoldyck comes when called.

It’s the cheerful blond man--one of the ones Kalluto has spoken to the least, for how he’s always tied up with the computer. Still, he’s not unpleasant--he’d hate to think what would happen if he’d upset Machi, or worse: Feitan, with his ghoulish black cowl.

Shalnark just takes him by the arm, chattering pleasantly about murder as they make their way back to the hotel.

When they arrive it is made abundantly clear that he has, in fact, upset Machi. And Feitan. And the rest.

Kalluto chews his cheek, and then stops, because Mother’s always said it was childish.

“Where’d you go?” Machi asks, a chill in her voice like the autumn rain outside.

Shalnark begins to explain--something about the crossroads they met at. It doesn’t seem that that was what she’d wanted to know, though.

“I went shopping,” says Kalluto, softly. He motions to the bag.

“Without telling anyone?”

Kalluto purses his lips, confused as ever. “I said I’d be back.”

“It’s fair enough,” says Franklin. Machi does not seem impressed.

“It is, but like--we thought you were gonna go downstairs or something, like to the arcade? We went looking for you there, and--” she trails off on a sigh, fingers twitching with the impulse to claw at the straw of her hair.

“We worried,” says Kortopi, simply.

The soft shushing sound of eleven people nodding, humming approval. Kalluto just stands, dripping on the carpet.

“We’re in a dangerous line of work,” explains Feitan, and Kalluto is most perplexed of all to hear that his voice _isn’t_ quivering in rage. “Which goes double for you.”

Shizuku smiles, though her lower lip looks bitten. “It’s not that we don’t think you’re capable. We do, but you’re--Machi? How old is he?”

_Nine and a half,_ he wants to tell her. Machi beats him to it, though, tells Shizuku curtly when he’ll be turning ten. She pales.

“We just--ugh. I don’t want to scold you, kid,” says Machi. Which is odd. Scolding, he thought, was one of those mysterious adult pleasures, like alcohol. “And Shizu’s right, we don’t think you’re stupid, or like, just a kid or something.”

“But please--and I almost never say please--if you’re gonna go out again, tell us where you’re going?”

Nobunaga nods, “It’s just something we do. We watch out for each other.”

As he says it, he looks terribly sad.

“My apologies,” says Kalluto.

The verdict is more or less unanimous _\--don’t worry about it._ Kalluto thinks that this is unaccountably odd, but knows better than to ask why.

When he gets to passing them out, they really do enjoy their gifts.

* * *

Some days after that, Kalluto wakes from a nightmare.

It doesn’t make sense, really--nothing unpleasant has happened, discounting the perennial lack of work. 

He has been, he’ll begrudgingly admit, decently happy.

Still he wakes up rigid, gasping, the sear of high voltage wracking out from his extremities.

And worse--someone is _there._

Kalluto lashes, blindly, and feels the slice of honed fingernails through cloth, perhaps skin.

He realizes, with a sickly creeping horror, that it’s Kortopi at his bedside, little hand clenching around the scratch.

An apology is in serious short order, but his throat is thick, flooded with residual adrenaline.

A quick survey of the room, then; to catch his breath.

_All of them_ are there. Dishevelled with sleep, drawn faces lined heavy with concern.

“...What?”

It’s all he can manage, tumbling out in a tone too thin and small for his liking. A frightened child’s voice, though he must insist on being neither.

“You were crying,” murmurs Shizuku, approaching with caution.

Someone says “we wanted to make sure you were alright,” but he can’t catch who it was. The room is dim and crowded and his mind still wobbles.

“I am,” says Kalluto, with every ounce of his decisiveness. The declaration itself makes him feel a little better, and he bolsters himself up, sitting straighter. He tidies up his hair, tries not to make too much a show of sniffling.

“My apologies,” he adds, to Kortopi. Thankfully, the scratch doesn’t look deep--just stinging. Kortopi shakes their head, as if to ask what friends are for.

It’s an odd feeling, the utter lack of anger in their eye.

“I scared you,” they say, and Kalluto hasn’t got the time to say _I wasn’t scared_ because the rest of the Troupe is here, because he owes them all an apology as well, immediately.

“I am sorry to bother you,” he insists, with a crisp dip of his head. “Y-you don’t need to worry about me.”

Machi shrugs. “We take care of our own.”

Kalluto nods--this loyalty, of all things, he can understand. Perhaps not when it’s _for him,_ but the general principle…

He tries not to think of the way he’d crawl into Killua’s bed after a dream like this, about how his sleep-soft brother would ask no questions--just roll over, making space.

He isn’t sure why it’s not more surprising to him that that’s what the Troupe does as well.

“‘F you want,” says Machi, “y’can come sleep out there with us.”

Silence.

“I’ll smack Phinks for you if he snores,” she goes on, and Kalluto breathes a little laugh.

Still--“no thank you,” pressed out through pursed lips.

“Alright,” says Machi, “sleep tight. I’ll smack the bedbugs too, if they bite.”

There is a murmuring of laughter, of assent. Kalluto is stunned at how quickly he’s warming to the sound.

He tucks himself back in, then, as they file out. Stares into the sharp neon display of the clock, the light pollution outside.

Sleep eludes him. He retreats under the duvet, thinks determinedly of the way it felt to huddle up at Killua’s side, to sit and listen until he could sync their breathing.

In the end, there isn’t any helping it. Kalluto sighs, slips out of bed.

He curls up snugly on a cushion, at the edge of his puddled snoring comrades, and sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> yes yes i know five timeses are passe i'm sorry i've just always wanted to write one.
> 
> anyway. thank you for reading! i've never written kalluto before but the funky little dude is so much fun, such a snobby little baby.
> 
> discuss: which of the phantom troupe members is the worst-dressed? also, let me know what you thought! this fic was kind of a departure for me.
> 
> if you like, come chill out with me on [twitter (18+)](https://twitter.com/bird_scribbles) or [my shiny new hxh discord!](https://discord.gg/Vx9Uy3c)
> 
> have a good one! :^>


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